Last week, the Delta emulator received an update that introduces a new feature for iPhone and iPad owners: native support for running physical Super Nintendo and Game Boy cartridges.
De acordo com a equipe de desenvolvedores, a funcionalidade funciona por meio de acessórios de hardware específicos, como o SN Operator e o GB Operator, ambos fabricados pela Epilogue. These devices act as cartridge readers and load games using software installed on the device.
In practice, the iPhone can now play Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games using the original cartridges. For now, however, this feature is only available in the Delta emulator and other applications do not support it.
Even though it is more practical to download the ROMs, which facilitates portability, the new support keeps the physical cartridges active. If your original SNES or Game Boy console has stopped working, this alternative may be a viable solution.
Physical cartridges on iPhone and Android devices
The demand came from Epilogue itself, which launched the Retrace app for Android and iOS in March 2026. The software allows you to connect the reader to your smartphone, check the authenticity of the cartridge and check its market value.
However, Retrace does not run games on the device. Given this, the creators of Delta chose to expand the usefulness of these add-on hardware for a broader purpose.
While integration is straightforward on iPhone and iPad, Android doesn’t offer a simple solution to the same problem. At most, users try to emulate Windows on their cell phones, which leads to complications.
In this case, it would be necessary to virtualize Windows on the device just to connect the reader and then transfer the data to the emulator. In addition to wasted time, the process is laborious and easily replaced by the use of traditional ROMs.
